ABSTRACT
Institutional design principles for water management have evolved from abstract concepts to application and acceptance. These principles are an integral part of major legislative initiatives, including the European Union Water Framework Directive. They include governance along hydrological boundaries (river basin or catchment basin), integrated water resources management (IWRM), stakeholder participation on all levels, transparency and accountability. No principle, however, can encapsulate the convoluted nature of an ongoing governing body, even one working within accepted boundaries and under clear policies and guidelines. The art of management requires that every institution understand its limitations, its strengths and weaknesses. All institutions are fluid; no government body works in a vacuum and they are all limited in time, personnel, resources and political support. For this reason, theorists, such as Kai Lee, who recognize the dynamic nature of institutions for the protection of natural resources, propagated adaptive management theory:
Adaptive management is an approach to natural resource policy that embodies a simple imperative: policies are experiments; learn from them … we do not understand nature well enough to know how to live harmoniously within environmental limits. Adaptive management takes that uncertainty seriously, treating human interventions in natural systems as experimental probes.
(Lee, 1993, p9) The Yarqon River Authority (YRA) was Israel’s first attempt at governance of a river basin. When it was created in 1988 there were examples of river authorities operating in other parts of the world, but none in the region. There was also abundant literature about institutional structure and governance of natural resources both within and without Israel. Early literature from the 1970s steered policy makers towards several principles. One, suggested by Bruce Ackerman and James Sawyer (1972), predicts failure if there is separation of thinkers from doers. A single institution must develop a master plan for the basin and implement its provisions. A second, also suggested by Ackerman and Sawyer, is that decisions by a basin agency are political and ‘decisions generated by the political process are generally accorded legitimacy in the contemporary polity’ (1972, p423). Therefore a basin authority should be representative of those living in the basin. A second author of wide practical experience, Ian Sinclair (1985, 1994) refined these general principles into a guide for effective governance of a river authority. Sinclair posited that a basin agency, to be effective, must have knowledge of the basin, be open and transparent and have the power to determine the quality of the water resources in the basin. Building on these guidelines, Elinor Ostrom (1990) actually proposed design principles for common property resource management; that is, a system with clearly defined boundaries, decision-making in public with those using the resource involved in the decision-making process and the nesting of local institutions with other levels of decision-making.